Work That Counts: Breaking Down the Barriers to Extraordinary Results

by Richard Lee, Joseph Grenny (Foreword)

One of Silicon Valley's top leadership trainers distills his proven framework that has empowered teams at the world's most innovative companies--from Google and Facebook to Cisco Systems and biotech giant Genentech/Roche--to do the best work of their lives.Richard Lee has worked with thousands of ambitious leaders and their teams, and has found that they all share the same frustration. Whether it's because of communication breakdowns or increasing complexity, people at every level of an organization feel like their results fall short of their expectations--even though they are putting in a lot of effort.Management gurus will tell you that you need to overhaul your entire organization in order to maximize its full potential, but that is simply not You only need to give your people the tools to succeed inside it.The framework outlined in Work That Counts draws on examples from teams he has worked with at the world's most cutting edge, disruptive companies, and provides practical solutions to the problems that hold people back in nearly every organization. Among other critical skills, you'll   •   How a team leader can hold team members accountable without micromanaging--and what team members need to do concurrently to earn the team leader's trust.  •   How to get support for your objectives from other teams, even when they don't report to you or your division or your business unit.  •   How to partner with others, within your team and on other teams, to achieve the results you want.Work That Counts is a commonsense yet groundbreaking guide, filled with assessments and real-world examples that will empower organizations to make the most of their people and become more than the sum of their parts.

269 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 13, 2020

About the author

Richard Lee is well known in the California Bay Area and Silicon Valley for helping companies build organizational capacity to scale and grow. He designed Work That Counts: In and Across Teams(TM), a new program designed to help participants make a bigger difference in complex organizations. Prior to launching Work That Counts, he consulted with hundreds of companies and thousands of professionals around the country and built a business around VitalSmarts' Crucial Conversations.

Reviews

[Clay.holk · Rating 1 out of 5]

According to his bio, Richard Lee is ‘one of Silicon Valley’s top leadership trainers’, having worked with Facebook, Google, Cisco and Genentech, among others.

That sounds great - I’d like to read a book by this guy, given that he’s had lots of experience working with lots of high performing teams and leaders. Unfortunately, the book I read didn’t seem to have much to do with any of this.

I’m going to tell you the three big points of advice in this book. Be empowered, and empower others in your organization. Be aligned with others in your organization. Be collaborative with others in your organization. Yes, that’s it. No, there’s not much more than that.

This book is not a master class of ideas for fine-tuning your leadership style to make it to the very top, as the author’s bio might lead you to think it would be.

I want to give this book credit, as there is an audience who would find the book helpful. It is a useful guide for someone starting their first job, or maybe for someone managing others for the first time. That’s not a bad thing - there need to be more books out there for those types of folks. And this is something that higher ups forget (and need reminding of) all the time. But that’s probably not what you go to Richard Lee, top Silicon Valley leadership trainer, for.

I’m really not sure if the book was as bad as I remember, or if it just strayed so far from my expectations, and that’s what I’m reacting negatively towards. And I generally hate the book review paradigm, where most things are either five stars (amazing!) or 1 star (worst book ever!). For that reason, I struggled with giving this book one star. And then I tried to remember what I had learned from the book, and the answer was…nothing. There was a fun little acronym of the topics covered - ACE - but I couldn’t even remember what it stood for. And even that didn’t work - the subject matter in the book went EAC. You had an acronym, dude! Use the acronym!

Less than a week after I finished it, this book is just vapor to me. I know six hours went somewhere, I just don’t know where they are.